How I got my comics when I was a kid:
Once a week, on Friday after school, my mom would bring my brother and me down to a newsstand in the next town over, the one with the best and most complete collection of comics in the area. (This was the 70s. "Complete" meant that they carried just about the whole Marvel and DC lines.) If you got there on a Friday, they had all of the week's magazines and comics in the back room, spread out on a table in stacks. Three inches of The Avengers, two and a half of Captain America, etc. We'd go in the back, make our selections, pay for them (we generally didn't buy the same titles, and we pretty much didn't read each other's just as a matter of personal taste), and that was it until the next week. I don't think I ever paid enough attention to comic schedules to know what was coming out on a given week, so there was always an element of surprise.
When we got home, I'd read my comics in reverse order of which were my favorites, saving the best for last (i.e. if it was an Avengers week, that'd be the last one read). I'd read each one cover to cover, including the letters page but probably not including all of Bullpen Bulletins until I got to the last comic. (That was the same in all the month's comics, after all.) And I was patient about it. I read slowly and carefully. I might not even finish reading all my purchases until the next day.
How I get my comics now:
First, I go online and peruse the listings for the comics that'll be coming out in a couple of months. I select those I want to get, searching to make sure I don't miss anything interesting, and I place my order. This is the point at which I have to decide which books I'm adding to or dropping from my "get list," and there are always a few titles whose status is up in the air, but for the most part I know what I want and I get it.
Then, once a month, usually near the very end or beginning, we get a box from our friendly not-so-neighborhood comic shop containing the comics I ordered several months earlier. I know what's coming, if I bother to check the order, which means sometimes. Assuming that I'm not in the middle of something, I open the box immediately, and read the ones I've most been looking forward to in a great big hurry. Usually that's three or four out of the total. I then read the rest, roughly in alphabetical order (since there will be three of us reading most of these, that makes it easier to keep track of who's read what). I'm not patient. I read them all, quickly, generally all in one day. Some I skim, some I read in more detail, but I read all of them. I'll then reread a number of them over the next week or two, particularly if I'm going to discuss them here. But the initial reading is done in a rush.
To me this seems counter-intuitive--you'd think that as an adult I'd be more likely to take my time, savoring each page, particularly since I know there won't be more for a month. Instead, I'm greedy about it now.
Maybe it's the monthly thing--that after an entire month without new comics, I'm so desperate for new material that I tear into it?
Maybe it's the sharing thing--that I try to get through them quickly because I know there are folks waiting in line for them?
Maybe it's just the time thing--that I just don't have the time now to be leisurely in my reading? (The husband is about two months behind on reading anything at all, so there might be some truth to this one.)
Maybe I'm just less patient now. That could happen, right? The internet doesn't help with this, by the way. It's possible that I've just lost some of my capacity for delayed gratification--used to be that if I wanted information on something and I didn't have a book on that subject in the house, I'd have to wait until the library opened. Now I just have to flip open the laptop, and I'm sure to be able to find something, right now this minute omg I can't wait until morning because it's driving me crazy and I have to know who played Morticia on the Addams family NOW! I don't even have to leave the house. Wait, that was a digression, wasn't it?
Oh, look, something shiny!
::walks away from computer::
1 comment:
I do much the same, the monthly thing. There are plenty of comics shops here but I rarely go in them, too much temptation to buy far too much stuff that has cover appeal but ultimately isn't worth the storage space (not much today is). Buying from the internet outlet I get a discount that, even with the monthly shipping, means I'm not spending as much for what I buy as I would in the shops, which is a good thing.
I also have the same problem with an increased need for instant gratification due to the internet.
Carolyn Jones on TV, Angelica Huston in the movies.
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